Symptom Care, Not Healthcare: What is Real Reform?

Last week, I walked into the MICU at a South Carolina hospital and talked to a physician. He said, “Something needs to be done about this healthcare crisis. I don’t know what though.” No one has the exact answer, but I do know what isn’t the answer and that is a public option healthcare system.

The question is, when discussing healthcare reform, are we headed in the right direction? If you read my writing much, you probably already know what I am going to say. So, for those that don’t, No we aren’t going in the right direction.

First of all, 85% of Americans are insured. Wow! Therefore, Harry Reid’s plan to include the public option is going to hurt the majority of Americans and put them under a moving van while backing up to repeatedly run them over. It is a true American tragedy. The majority screams for no public option yet the minority continues to push it. Would it be too extreme if I called this a Healthcare Holocaust? Maybe not so much.

However, being uninsured isn’t the real problem in healthcare. One of the real problems is Torts. Tort reform is one of the real ways to revitalize our healthcare system. Our brilliant masterminds and architects in the Senate totally left physicians, healthcare professionals, and insurance companies in the dust. While I worked a brief stint in Risk Management at a hospital, I saw everything. People will sew for the smallest things even if they suffer a scratch in a hospital hallway. This causes hospitals, healthcare professionals, and insurance companies to pay out money that is needed to pay for the real problems that happen. Everyone in healthcare and insurance is getting ripped off. TORT REFORM! It is one of the incredibly clear answers.

However, the biggest problem I find is not with tort reform or insurance at all. It is with the way we practice medicine in this country. When I was young, every time I would go to the doctor, I would come home with an antibiotic. Now I’m immune to certain ones and germ resistant bacteria can now take over my body. Maybe that is a slight exaggeration. I just watched my grandmother suffer and I brought home 35 medicines from the nursing home that she used to take daily. I know, you probably think that is a joke but it isn’t. I am confident the medicine only made her sicker and the side effects killed her. We treat every ache and pain with a medicine that does not heal, but takes away the symptoms temporarily. This puts an incredible burden on insurance companies and on the taxpayer. What kind of healthcare is this? It isn’t healthcare, it is symptom care. Drug companies know many cures to diseases, many could release this but the ever so powerful FDA and Drug Companies want MONEY and POPULATION CONTROL, not healthy people! Furthermore, dying people are given treatments that only prolong their suffering and their death. This raises hospital bills that the American taxpayer pays after they die. Much of that money is just assumed by the hospital putting them into debt. What kind of responsibility is this in our system?

We need broad reform, that is true. However, the focus should be taken to our medical schools and not necessarily to the insurance industry. I don’t think an 85% insured rate is so bad. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right? In the free country that we supposedly live in, let people be who they are without government intervention. Everyone cannot be the same, we would eliminate the freedom that many of us love if that happened. If someone cannot buy insurance, it is a shame, but it is a necessary evil for our constitutional republic to stay free. So, let’s fix what is broken, the torts and the way we practice medicine. This, in itself, will make insurance and being a healthcare provider much more affordable.